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For decades, Western Digital has been recognized as one of the very few leaders in the world of storage and hard drives. If you open up that pre-built computer you bought, there's a good chance that on the inside you'll find a Western Digital-branded drive. If you're building your own, you likely purchased (or at least considered) going with Western Digital for your internal storage solution.

Where this might now have been the case is if you wanted to be a part of the growing trend of users switching to solid state drives. SSDs allow for faster speeds, both in read and write times, as well as the benefit of having no moving parts. They are faster, quieter, and more durable. When they were first released, they were prohibitively expensive, but as time has gone on, prices have dropped substantially as they do with any new form of technology.

The problem that Western Digital had was that it's class-leading hard disk drive prowess didn't mean that it was prepared for the new age of SSDs, and it had nothing to offer customers who wanted to go this route. It's solution was to purchase SanDisk in March 2016, a company that excels at flash storage solutions, and 8 months later we have the first results in the Western Digital Blue SSD.

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Backblaze not only allows access to data from all your devices, but it backs up automatically and continuously so there are zero tasks added to your plate. It’s a simple solution to a complex problem that can often end in disaster.Right now you can grab a one-year subscription for $24.99 from Gear Live Deals. That is half off the regular price!

Summer is nearing an end, and back to school season is in full swing. As you shop for those notebooks, backpacks, pencils, and the like, be sure to keep in mind that we live in a digital world where students are expected to become comfortable with technology. Homework now involves the Internet and the usage of tablets and laptops to get the job done. When moving those items around, it’a always good to have a backup, even in the age of cloud storage. SanDisk is always up to the challenge, and I’ve relied on SanDisk digital storage for over a decade when it comes to photography, and external storage.

Transporter Desktop 3.0 introduces includes several new features and enhancements designed to improve your private file sharing experience:

Read-only Shared Folders: A Shared Folder owner can now assign read-only permissions on a per-user-per-folder basis.

New Clearer Finder Icon Badges: Transporter Desktop icon badges have been updated for both Mac and Windows for better visibility and clarity.

Enhanced OS X Yosemite Support: Transporter Desktop includes changes to fully support Yosemite at both a functional and aesthetic level. Visible changes include a new folder appearance that is exclusive to Yosemite users as well as Yosemite-style contextual menu integration.

Create a folder on mobile: You can now create a folder on your Transporter from your iOS or Android mobile device.

If you're unfamiliar with the Transporter, it's a private cloud that allows you to store, access, and share your files from anywhere. Since the device is iunder your control, you don't have to rely on the privacy policies of third-party services, and you can have as much storage as you'd like without the subscription fees. You can pick up the Transporter Sync on Amazon which allows you to hook up any USB hard drive, or get the original Transporter which uses internal drives.

The free storage is applied to the account that the Fire Phone is registered under

The phone will upload your pictures and videos, but only the pictures get unlimited free space. Videos uploaded will use your Amazon Cloud Drive storage allotment.

Photos uploaded are in their original, full-resolution format

The unlimited free storage only applies to photos taken and uploaded with the Fire Phone. If you sync over photos to the phone that weren't taken with it, those will count against your allotment. Similarly, if you upload photos taken with the Fire Phone from another device, they'll also count against your storage space.

If you give away or sell your Fire Phone, all of your photos will remain in your Amazon Cloud Drive. If you then get a new Fire Phone in the future, the unlimited photo storage benefit will return to your account.

Some have been comparing Amazon's offering to what Apple will be including in iOS 8, and later, OS X Yosemite, where it will also allow you to store all of your photos and videos in iCloud. The difference is that Apple will allow you to automatically upload your entire photo library, regardless of where the images were taken, but there will be a fee if you go over 5GB. There's no unlimited option for images, and certainly not for video.

Amazon just announced its new Fire Phone, and one of the big value-adds is that owners will get unlimited photo storage on Amazon Cloud Drive. This comes just two weeks after Apple announced the new iCloud Photo Library option during its WWDC 2014 keynote, which allows you to store all of the photos and videos that you have, with the difference being that Apple only gives you the first 5GB of storage for free, and then you have to pay for additional tiers, which starts at $0.99 per month for 20GB. Amazon is providing unlimited photo storage (although they didn't specifically say that videos were included) right off the bat, a key differentiator. This means you can snap away without fear of using up all your local storage space, and it's one less backup you need to worry about as well.

The Amazon Fire Phone will sell for $199.99 on-contract, and is exclusive to AT&T. You can pre-order today, and it'll be released on July 25th. For a limited time, buyers will also receive a free year of Amazon Prime with purchase!

Western Digital has announced its new My Passport Pro external Thunderbolt storage drive. The new device features two internal drives with user-selectable RAID functionality, making it perfect for those working with high-end graphics and video, and those who need more reliable mirroring.

On the inside, you'll find two 2.5-inch drives, with one model totaling 2 TB, and another providing 4 TB of storage. As the drive used Thunderbolt for connectivity, there's no separate power cable--the Thunderbolt cable is all you need to power the 233 MBps My Passport Pro. The 2 TB model sells for $299.99, while the 4 TB version is available for $429.99.

This is an entry from our 2013 Holiday Gift Guide. Check it out for suggestions on what to buy your loved, liked, and hated ones this holiday season!

If you know someone who needs some fast portable storage that also compact and portable, look no further than the My Passport Slim from Western Digital, our next featured item in our 2013 Holiday Gift Guide. I have one, and it does it's job at my desk where I typically work, but when I need the storage on the go, I can easily slip it into a bag or pocket, and I've got a terabyte at USB 3.0 with me. For the data hogs in your life.

We're big fans of Connected Data's Transporter device, which basically gives you locally stored and protected cloud storage without having to upload your files to third-party services like Dropbox or Copy, with no subscription fee. Now, on the heels of the Connected Data & Drobo merger agreement, comes the announcement of Transporter 2.0, a big software update for the NAS. Version 2.0 of the Transporter software brings a host of welcome improvements like:

Improved integration with the OS X Finder and Windows Explorer

Custom right-click options and drag-and-drop functionality

Share direct links to files and folders

Choose how folders are synced (locally or remotely)

Increased firewall support

Additionally, new Transporter iOS and Android apps will allow remote access and management of files stored on the device. Transporter v2.0 will be a free software upgrade for all existing customers. For new customers, Transporter starts at $199 without a hard drive, $299 for 1TB, and $399 for 2TB.

Here at Gear Live, we're big fans of both Drobo and the Transporter, so excuse us if we're more than a little excited about the announcement that the two companies that entered into a merger agreement. We've covered the Transporter in the past, but to refresh your memory, it's a collaborative file-sharing device that offers Dropbox- or Copy-like functionality, but stored locally with no fees. Of course, Drobo makes fantastic external storage devices, many of which we've covered extensively. It will be great to see new Drobos that offer the Transporter file-sharing abilities. Nothing official has been announced, but we can dream.